Artist Profiles

Sera Senakovicz – July Featured Artist

Sera Senakovicz grew up in British Columbia and moved to Nova Scotia in 2005. Since graduating from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design she has been making prints wherever and however she can. She has been a recipient of two creation grants from ARTS Nova Scotia to help her to attend a residency at Spark Box Studios and to make a new body of work for a solo exhibition at Parentheses Gallery this past February. She is interested in oral histories of neighbourhoods and buildings and how lives are lived within and around them.

Michael McCormack – June Featured Artist

Michael McCormack is an interdisciplinary artist from Halifax and former Director of Eyelevel Gallery. His work stems from an interest in intergenerational communications, skill sharing and experimental translation. See his upcoming exhibition at ARTsPLACE in Annapolis Royal June 14 – July 12.

Geoff Butler – May Featured Artist

Geoff Butler is an artist and writer in Granville Ferry, NS. His work is a mixture of realism and fantasy commenting on the human condition. Recently he has been an artist-in-residence with Fogo Island Arts in Newfoundland, and with the Labrador Institute & Grenfell Campus Art Gallery in North West River, Labrador. His recent work will be exhibited at the Annapolis Region Community Arts Council in August.

Susan MacDonald, "Rocky Shore", 11"x14", watercolour, 2015.

Susan MacDonald – April Artist Profile

Susan MacDonald is an artist and art educator with over 25 years of experience. As a VANS PAINTS artist she has been working with school children in Cape Breton for the past several years. She is currently exploring the medium of watercolours and enjoys the intensity and subtlety of colour that the medium offers.

Lynn Rotin, "Downtown", mixed media on paper, 30" x 24", 2014

Lynn Rotin – March Artist Profile

Lynn Rotin started her career as a photographer for choreographers and independent theater in Toronto. After moving to Halifax in 1989 she decided to enroll at NSCAD has been a practising artist since. She has received grants from the Canada Council, and her work is collected by the Nova Scotia Art Bank. Her drawings and paintings on paper use mixed media, building on layers of mark making.

Pamela Swainson – February Artist Profile

Born in Manitoba and currently living on a farm in the Cobequid Mountains, Pamela Swainson studied in the Fine Arts Program at Mount Allison in the early 70’s. She recently returned to her practice after several years on hold. Swainson is passionate about local living and sustainability, with caring for the earth is a subtext in her work.

Jack Wong, "David Copperfield (Illustration 12 of 400)", Graphite on paper, 20” x 24”, 2014

Jack Wong – January Featured Artist

Emerging artist and active volunteer Jack Wong works in drawing and participatory performance. Currently he is researching and writing on the topics of allegory, postmodernism, and video art, and on non-display in contemporary practice. His artwork is a means to test out ideas and opinions critical of the sociopolitcal landscape.

Kat Frick Miller, Fish Trilogy, watercolour, 11" x 14",

Kat Frick Miller – December Featured Artist

Kat Frick Miller is a textile and illustration artist based in Lunenburg, NS. Recently she has been working with the Atlantic Fisheries Museum, and uses rural life in Nova Scotia as the inspiration for her work. Miller is working on illustration for an upcoming book related to rural living. Find her work at the 10th Anniversary Halifax Crafters Winter Market December 5-7, 2014.

Suzanne Gauthier, Rain On Fox River, digital photograph, 2014

Suzanne Gauthier – October Artist Profile

Suzanne Gauthier was born in Lorette Manitoba and studied and taught at the University of Manitoba (BFA Honours 1969). In 1989 she relocated to Halifax to teach full time at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work is based in drawing, printmaking and collage, and has recently been engaged in photographs of moving water. See her studio exhibition Acquainted with Light, October 16-31, as part of Photopolis.

Christopher Webb – September Artist Profile

My work is rooted in questions of spirituality and morality. Compositions are calculated, controlled and attempt to reach perfection. They are resolved. Conflict has been removed. They are intended to act as a counterpoint to our chaotic society and the lack of control I have as an individual struggling with my place.

Judith J. Leidl, "Cape Blomidon: Spring", 48 inches by 64 inches, acrylic on gallery canvas, 2014

Judith Leidl – August Artist Profile

Judith Leidl has taught printmaking at NSCAD and Nunavut Arctic College, Baffin Island. Judith has also worked for several years at the world renowned Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts in Pangnirtung, Baffin Island as Artistic Advisor to the Pangnirtung Community Print Collection. She has also been a faculty member at Acadia University since 1998, teaching both drawing and painting. Judith Leidl’s art work is included in many private and public collections nationally and internationally.

Bethany Riordan-Butterworth – June Artist Profile

Bethany currently shares a studio at Wonder’neath Studio where she produces functional pottery as Bread and Butter Pottery; she an instructor at the George Dixon Centre and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; and shares a collaborative practice with Ella Tetrault- together they facilitate the Fuller Terrace Lecture Series, a community-based project in Halifax’s North End.

Threads, wool, linen and cotton threads, installation on the artist's property

Karen Langlois – May Artist Profile

After a 20-year career in Early Childhood Education Karen Langlois walked through the doors of Toronto School of Art and never looked back. Three years later she left Ontario to pursue her other long-neglected dream: a house in the woods in Nova Scotia. For the past seven years she has been making art and gardening in Port Medway.

Jay LeBlanc, "pathway", (detail), 15" x 16"

Jay LeBlanc – February Featured Artist

Jay LeBlanc is a proponent of serious play who indulges in abstract art of varying kinds. Mostly known for her innovative stained glass hangings, she also experiments with painting, printmaking, mixed media, photography and poetry, along with a recent dabbling in installation. Her work “homing / vol de rentrée / de vuelta” is currently being shown at Gallerie Le Trécarré.

Joy Laking, Autumn Marsh, oil painting 2013, 34" x 36"

Joy Laking – January Featured Artist

Joy Laking is an artist and longstanding member of VANS. For the past forty years, she has tried to capture the beauty of her surroundings with paint, mainly working close to her home on the shore of the Bay of Fundy. Her work is featured in the Dalhousie Art Gallery exhibition CAPTURE 2014: Nova Scotia Realism, curated by Tom Smart.